What Happened to Iggy
by SquidlovesIggy
Summary: After the Paris explosion, Iggy is lost and unsure of how to go on. Pondering his future and his life, he remembers the day he went blind. My first fanfic, post- Angel.


**The story of how Iggy went blind, revealed and remembered. It's really long, but I put lot of work into it. Please read! This is my first fanfic, so I'm kind of nervous about how it'll seem to people. I suppose this also explains how Iggy discovered fire.**

Iggy's face was buried in his hands. What was happening to his flock? There was supposed to be six of them, six who fit together like puzzle pieces. When they were younger, they could all trust each other. They would always be okay if they were together, all of them. Iggy knew things must be bad when Fang left, but he hadn't expected Angel to... die. It was his fault. He could have stopped the explosion, but no, he was high up in the air, absorbing attention. Everything was wrong and there was nothing he could do. Well, he himself could leave. That might work. The flock could survive if they didn't have to take care of Iggy. He could just... die.

_Great._ He thought. _Now I'm sounding like Fang._

But maybe he could just disappear. The flock would get over it. They all knew he was different. Even the whitecoats had treated him different. Hadn't he been the one who they performed the worst surgeries on? Didn't he have the scars to prove it? He felt his arm, raw with burns and rough with old incisions. How they had hurt him, but he didn't want to remember that. He slapped his forehead, hoping to stop the flow of memories, but it was too late. He could see everything in his head.

_Iggy had the smallest dog crate. He was not as important as the others, the whitecoats said. He was too sickly, and they had two others that were better suited for their purpose. Iggy didn't understand most of the stuff the whitecoats said, but he knew that the surgeries made him sicker. They made him hurt more than a seven year old boy should, more than anyone should hurt._

_Nearly every day, he was yanked roughly out of his crate and strapped down onto an operating table. Sometimes they gave him funny medicines that made him sleepy, but most often they left him awake. He always tried not to scream, but how could he help it? Every day his friend Max remarked that he looked worse. She and the other boy, Fang, they thought Iggy should try to fight the doctors. Iggy knew it was pointless. He had lost hope, and now he always hung limply from the arms of the whitecoats as they carried him to the operating rooms. Iggy no longer had enough strength to do most anything. The only thing that gave him hope was the little piece of paper cut out from a magazine he had found in his crate one day. He only knew a few letters, but with the help of Max and Fang, they deciphered the one word scrawled onto the photograph._

_Freedom._

_Every day, Iggy would look at the picture. He would gaze at the blue sky and the green trees below. Puffy clouds were resting on the horizon, and a flock of birds flew in the distance. He knew that that was what he wanted. Freedom._

Now, sitting on the singed front step of some French house that was now burned down, Iggy knew that Jeb had given him that picture. He didn't want to think about Jeb, though. He was just another person who couldn't be trusted.

_Then they came to ruin his life. Iggy hadn't expected to live much longer, anyways. The whitecoats were taking him even more than usual to experiment- and they were doing the most dangerous ones yet- the ones that could really kill him. They would only test Iggy, though, because the others were still likely to live for a while. Just that morning, Max had told Iggy how worried she was about him._

_She woke him up earlier than he liked to be awake._

_"Ig!" She had called._

_"Bite me." He groaned. It was so hard to do anything_

_" Iggy. Listen to me. Can you please eat my breakfast this morning? Please? You need the energy." Max was so clever, but Iggy didn't expect to still be there at breakfast time. He had a feeling they might get rid of him today._

_"Iggy. I know you haven't eaten in days."_

_Max was like a mom. She knew he was sick._

_"I won't be here for breakfast."_

_"Yes, you will."_

_"No, Max. I think I'm gonna die."_

_"Don't talk like that. None of us are going to die."_

_Iggy sighed. Of course she wouldn't understand. "I'm not like the rest of you."_

_"Yes you are! What do you think in that crazy head of yours?"_

_"A lot of stuff." A quick grin broke onto his face, then fluttered away._

_"Well, you better eat my breakfast, or I'll kill you before the whitecoats can. You're looking real pale, you know."_

_"Like I don't know that. I'm not blind."_

Iggy could remember that feeling- the feeling when he thought he was going to die. He was such a crazy little kid. Weak, too. He didn't know anything about bombs then. He didn't have anything to keep him going. Max and Fang? Well, even then, they had each other. Nudge and Gazzy were too little to understand freedom or the fact that they were slaves to science.

_Iggy was right. They took him away before breakfast. As the whitecoat slung him over his shoulder, he took one last look at his friends- The Gasman sucking his thumb, Nudge hugging her blanket, and Max and Fang, holding hands and staring at him with wide eyes._

_Iggy realized that he didn't want to die. He wanted to stay with his friends. Praying to the God he didn't know existed, he pushed against the whitecoat and leaped out of the way. Freedom. That's what he wanted. He pushed on the door- so much work for a weak child who was as skinny as an anorexic- and ran into the depths of the School. The hallways were wide and clean, with high ceilings. He knew he had one last chance, and he tore off the thin greenish white shirt he always wore. It matched the ones the doctors wore, and he hated it. He threw it down the hallway and spread out his wings. Oh, they were a beauty. White and smooth, he had never used them. Now he tried. Somehow, he knew what to do. As whitecoats noticed their escaped subject, they started to run after him. He was too fast for them, and he grinned._

_"Suckers!" He called._

_He jumped into the air and felt the feeling of flying. It made him giddy, like the medicines they sometimes gave him. He flapped and felt air brush past his face. He didn't know how to turn and was only a foot off the ground, but he was more free than he had ever been before._

_"He's flying!"_

_"It works!"_

_Iggy almost didn't hear the ecstatic cries of the whitecoats, but he knew he was still in danger. He needed to get out of the School, then find a way to get his friends out, because he knew they had to be together. It was very important._

_"Shoot him!"_

_At that command, Iggy turned his head and saw the man with the gun._

_He wasn't free any more._

_The man aimed the gun and shot Iggy out of the air. Within seconds, he was feeling bad. Sleepy and bad. He tried to stay awake, crawl away from the bad people, but sleep was so welcoming..._

_The last things he saw were the clear double doors leading outside. He had been so close. Outside the doors was a welcoming blue sky._

Iggy felt the sun on his face. Was it morning already? The flock would be looking for him soon, he still didn't know what he was going to do.

_Iggy slept for a long time. Somewhere in his dreams, he figured that they were killing them. At one point, he heard voices. Bad voices. Bad whitecoat voices._

_" We're losing him."_

_"It didn't work. Should we kill him now or wait?"_

"_Wait. He should survive if we're careful." Iggy recognized that voice. It was Jeb, a whitecoat who sometimes snuck toys and extra food to him and his friends._

_The voices got quieter and quieter, and Iggy sunk own into a deeper sleep._

_When he woke up, he couldn't see. He opened his eyes to darkness, then tried again. Nothing. Again, nothing. Again, same results. Lights must be off. He let his fingers skim around his surroundings. He was strapped to a table, but not tightly. It didn't take too much work for him to slip out. He felt around the room- table, operating instruments, a chair, a glass of water. He didn't care if a dirty whitecoat had drunk from it and gulped down the rest of the water. It soothed his dry throat, and he continued to feel his way around. A drawer. By the closed door, he located a light switch. He felt a bad feeling and realized it was on._

_Power must be out, he convinced himself. That must be it. Great- he'd be stuck in here until someone let him out. What fun. He continued to feel around, wondering why he wasn't dead. Maybe the whitecoats had done something to make him better, although that was far nicer than they usually acted. Hmm._

_In the top drawer of a funny little table, he found a little box. He quickly opened the top- food, maybe? No, it was matches. He could light one and see where he was._

_Iggy struck the match against the side of the container and felt the heat from the flame._

_He couldn't see it._

_It must be lit, he thought, and opened his eyes as wide as they would go. As much as he tried, he couldn't see the warm flame that was now licking the edge of his fingers._

_"Where is it?" He sceeched, realizing what had happened. The power wasn't out. He was blind._

_Tears came to his non-seeing eyes, and Iggy let out a string of every swear word he knew. He needed to see the match. How could he find his way to freedom if he couldn't see? Would he never again see the blue sky, or the trees, or his friends?_

_In a rage he grabbed the flame with his hand, not even feeling the pain as he burned he skin of his palm. Screw those whitecoats. He would kill 'em, all. He lit another match and laughed at the thought of burning them. He had power now, fire. It was always moving, always warm, always powerful. Without caring about his own safety, he dropped the match on the sheet that lay on the operating table. Oh, he loved the crackling sound the fire made as the sheet burned to a crisp. He held his hand close to the fire, feeling the power. He needed more fire, more movement, more sound. He swung his arms around wildly, laughing maniacally, and lit another match. What could he do with its power? Get out of the room. It took no effort to find a vial of chemicals and he hoped it would do something cool._

_It did. Iggy was blasted out of the room with an explosion that rocked the entire School, air whooshing past his ears and debris hitting every bone in his body. Heat made his senses more acute. He liked that. Now, he could do anything. He felt the fire burn around him and didn't care about the pain. They were going to do stuff, him and his fire._

Iggy grinned. He still didn't mind the pain of burns, in fact, it made him understand the power of fire better. He had the power, even if he was blind. After that first encounter with explosions, he never was the same. Max and Fang had each other, Nudge had words, Gazzy had humor, Angel had other peoples thoughts.

Iggy had fire.


End file.
